I've setup a tomcat 6 server, and want to serve up my web application - if I check off "Serve modules without publishing" it thinks for a while, and then displays the error "Publishing to <myprojectname...> has encountered a problem. Could not publish server configuration: null."

This is similar to old errors when people said that "localhost" was not set in the server.xml file - but I check that, and it is not the problem. Anyone know of a work-around for this OTHER than un-checking Serve Modules without publishing? That too has problems (every time it tries to republish, it fails because it thinks files are locked, so I always have to clean and republish - which takes a good 4-5 minutes with an app our size.

This bug is killing me, and figured I'd check here before I roll back to the previous version of eclipse which did not have this problem.

On 8/4/2010 3:14 PM, Ken Chenis wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I posted my stack dump in an open bug report on bugs.eclipse.org ( Bug
> 318492) - but have not heard anything, so I figured I'd ask here if
> anyone knows of a work around.
>
> Using:
>
> Eclipse: Helios Release 20100617-1415
> Tomcat: 6.0.28
> Java: JDK 1.6.0_21 X64 Startup Command Line: start eclipse.exe -data
> ..\..\Data\WorkSpace -vm
> .\jdk\bin\javaw -vmargs -Xmx1024M -Xms512M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M
> OS: Windows 7 Enterprise
>
> I've setup a tomcat 6 server, and want to serve up my web application -
> if I check off "Serve modules without publishing" it thinks for a while,
> and then displays the error "Publishing to <myprojectname...> has
> encountered a problem. Could not publish server configuration: null."
>
> The stack dump is:
>
> !ENTRY org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core 4 0 2010-08-02 17:34:06.425
> !MESSAGE Could not publish server configuration: null.
> !STACK 0
> java.lang.NullPointerException
> at
> org.eclipse.wst.common.componentcore.internal.resources.Virt
> ualContainer.createVirtualResource(VirtualContainer.java:355 )
> at
> org.eclipse.wst.common.componentcore.internal.resources.Virt
> ualContainer.getResources(VirtualContainer.java:338)
> at
> org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core.internal.TomcatPublishMod
> uleVisitor.endVisitWebComponent(TomcatPublishModuleVisitor.j ava:293)
> at
> org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core.internal.wst.ModuleTraver
> ser.traverseWebComponent(ModuleTraverser.java:220)
> at
> org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core.internal.wst.ModuleTraver
> ser.traverse(ModuleTraverser.java:117)
> at
> org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core.internal.TomcatVersionHel
> per.updateContextsToServeDirectly(TomcatVersionHelper.java:8 54)
> at
> org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core.internal.Tomcat60Configur
> ation.updateContextsToServeDirectly(Tomcat60Configuration.ja va:686)
> at
> org.eclipse.jst.server.tomcat.core.internal.TomcatServerBeha
> viour.publishFinish(TomcatServerBehaviour.java:454)
> at
> org.eclipse.wst.server.core.model.ServerBehaviourDelegate.pu
> blish(ServerBehaviourDelegate.java:954)
> at
> org.eclipse.wst.server.core.model.ServerBehaviourDelegate.pu
> blish(ServerBehaviourDelegate.java:775)
> at
> org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server.publishImpl(Serv er.java:2888)
> at
> org.eclipse.wst.server.core.internal.Server$PublishJob.run(S
> erver.java:337)
> at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:54)
>
>
> This is similar to old errors when people said that "localhost" was not
> set in the server.xml file - but I check that, and it is not the
> problem. Anyone know of a work-around for this OTHER than un-checking
> Serve Modules without publishing? That too has problems (every time it
> tries to republish, it fails because it thinks files are locked, so I
> always have to clean and republish - which takes a good 4-5 minutes with
> an app our size.
> This bug is killing me, and figured I'd check here before I roll back to
> the previous version of eclipse which did not have this problem.
>
> Thanks all!
>
> Ken

I've updated that bug to request you open a separate bug since yours is
different, i.e. the NPE is occurring within Eclipse instead of Tomcat.
My only shot in the dark guess at this point is that the
".settings/org.eclipse.wst.common.component" in your project contains an
entry that refers to a folder or file that doesn't exist in your
workspace. Other code in WTP may be able to avoid or silently ignore
this circumstance, but the "Server modules without publishing" code
isn't currently prepared to do the same. If this isn't the case, I'll
be asking for more detail about your project in the bug you file.

If you are using WTP 3.2, instead of the recently release WTP 3.2.1, be
aware that Bug 317852[1] could cause publishing to be unexpectedly slow.
WTP 3.2.1 may be able to speed up the 4-5 minute clean publish time.